Obamacare

The US Supreme Court approved most of the Affordable Care Act in late June. Problem solved? I don’t think so.

The regulations force US citizens to purchase medical insurance from the same for-profit corporations whose practices have been the explosive fuel for askyrocket in inflation rates of healthcare in the USA. Advertising for brand-name drugs, stellar executive salaries, and political contributions are among their medically-unnecessary fees.

The ACA as it now stands has some provisions that will help many UWT students. Adult offspring still living with parents will be covered through their parents’ insurance plans until age 26. The insurance corporations will no longer be allowed to refuse medical coverage to “unprofitable” citizens who have become sick or who have contracted the dreaded “pre-existing conditions.”

With the ACA, state Medicaid socialized medical care programs will expand to include more low-income US citizens, many of whom are UWT studentsover the age of 26. The most recent Census numbers reveal that 146.4 million or nearly half of the US population now lives either below or too near thepoverty level.

Romney has promised to overturn this meager baby-step towards a single-payer system if he becomes president, even though it is very similar to themedical reform plan which he adopted when he was governor of Massachusetts. Many of the promises that presidential candidates make are reversed later and this sounds hollow. If the ACA survives relatively intact, the USA will remain the only major industrialized nation on the planet which does not protect the health of all of its citizens.

About 17% of the US Gross Domestic Product continues to be spent on healthcare. Canada, the top-spender among other single-payer health care nations invests less than half that amount while protecting the health of every single person there.

The mandate forcing US citizens to buy medical insurance from for-profit corporations has been upheld by the same high court that gave us the “Citizens United” decision which unleashed tsunamis of unlimited secretive dollars to further suffocate our political process; R.I.P.

Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.org) remind us that about 27 million US citizens will still be left out of the most expensive hybrid-socialized medical care system on the planet. The excluded citizens will have little choice but to seek medical care in our nation’s expensive emergency rooms.

“Obamacare” is yet another corporate-orchestrated regulatory giveaway by our “electeds” in D.C. for the for-profit medical industry. With it they will secure new profits from millions more compulsory “customers.”